The disintegration of philosophy in the nineteenth century and its collapse in
the twentieth have led to a similar, though much slower and less obvious,
process in the course of modern science.

Today’s frantic development in the field of technology has a quality
reminiscent of the days preceding the economic crash of 1929: riding on the
momentum of the past, on the unacknowledged remnants of an Aristotelian
epistemology, it is a hectic, feverish expansion, heedless of the fact that its
theoretical account is long since overdrawn—that in the field of scientific
theory, unable to integrate or interpret their own data, scientists are
abetting the resurgence of a primitive mysticism. In the humanities, however,
the crash is past, the depression has set in, and the collapse of science is
all but complete.

The clearest evidence of it may be seen in such comparatively young sciences as
psychology and political economy. In psychology, one may observe the attempt to
study human behavior without reference to the fact that man is conscious. In
political economy, one may observe the attempt to study and to devise social
systems without reference to man.

It is philosophy that defines and establishes the epistemological criteria to
guide human knowledge in general and specific sciences in particular.